Celebrities from Michael Jackson to President Obama have flocked to the Croisette's picturesque palace.

Like an elegant grand dame, the InterContinental Carlton Cannes Hotel has seen it all: kings, queens, a meeting of the League of Nations in 1922 and of the world's G20 leaders, including President Obama, in 2011. But it's during the Cannes Film Festival that the 343-room hotel, marking its 100th birthday this year, is at its starriest.

Surveying the crowded lobby in 1972 -- as starlets competed for attention and producers tried to nail down deals -- director John Huston told The Hollywood Reporter, "If you stand there long enough, you can see anyone who matters in the movie business walk by." And the hotel forever will be linked to Princess Grace of Monaco. It was there that she filmed Alfred Hitchcock's To Catch a Thief in 1954, then met her future husbandPrince Rainier the following year.

On May 21, as part of its centennial celebration, the hotel will host a benefit gala for The Heart Fund. Sony Pictures Classics co-president Tom Bernard, who is chairing the event, has been staying at the Carlton since 1981. "It's just a grand place," he says, recalling seeing Michael Jackson -- whom he first mistook for a Jackson impersonator -- roaming the halls one morning and another occasion when Brazilian soccer star Pele, in the midst of a press conference, jumped into the crowd and collared a pickpocket. "Even the most outrageous and incredible things seem ordinary within those walls."